I’m in Springfield, MO today keynoting the Southwest Missouri PRSA Professional Development Conference. The theme for the PRSA conference is “Driving Forces,” and the morning presentation will frame up 6 driving forces PR professionals are facing:
The Changing Career Market for PR Professionals
Expectations for Providing a More Strategic Perspective
The Evolving Role of PR Leaders
Changing and Broadening Impacts for Content Creation
If you want to follow along on Twitter, the conference hashtag is #swmoprsa, and I hope there will be enough live tweeting for you to get a sense of the content if you’d like.
It should be a fun group to spend an extended amount of time with today. The origin of the request to speak came via Claire Faucett of engage5w. I sat next to Claire at one of Ben Smith’s SocialIRL programs last year, and for as much as I struggle with forcing myself to network at conferences, this is a great example that it’s always valuable to meet new people – even if you think it’s more comfortable to stand in the corner! - Mike Brown
Download the free ebook, “Taking the NO Out of InNOvation” to help you generate fantastic ideas! For an organizational creative boost, contact The Brainzooming Group to help your team be more successful by rapidly expanding strategic options and creating innovative plans to efficiently implement. Email us atinfo@brainzooming.comor call us at 816-509-5320 to learn how we can deliver these benefits for you.
Founder of The Brainzooming Group, and a huge fan of strategy, creativity, and innovation. Mike is a frequent speaker on innovation, strategic thinking, and social media.
Here are thoughts on the sports, the show, and the marketing for the 2012 London Olympics. Nothing exhaustive here, but a variety of thoughts from my Twitter, Facebook, and “still inside my head” feeds during the past two weeks of watching a good amount of the 2012 London Olympics.
The Sports
Don’t you wish you could assign a difficulty rating to your co-workers as they do to dives in the Summer Olympics? Then your performance review and compensation would be tied to how well you performed relative to the difficulty rating of your work team.
While it appeared early on Michael Phelps may have made a significant mistake in coming back to compete in one more Summer Olympics, it clearly was the right thing to do. And in the stuff great stories are made of, the his initial failure to medal followed by his record setting performance (and humility in doing so), turned Michael Phelps from a super human to a personality possessing the flaws we all have and attaining the success we all aspire to in our lives.
It doesn’t seem that the men’s decathlon gets nearly as much attention as it did when Bruce Jenner won the decathlon in 1976. Maybe that’s to try to save us from some horrific future version of whatever the Karadashians juggernaut might be like 35 years from now.
It’s fascinating NBC was reporting diving scores along with Twitter followers and YouTube views of the athletes. Maybe by 2016, live tweeting will be an Olympic sport.
I am just not a fan of the Pageantry + Sports formula, whether it is the Olympics, the Super Bowl, or whatever. Having said that, the opening ceremony for London just seemed to be a mess, including even Paul McCartney turning in a disappointing performance. Maybe you simply had to have a UK perspective to get the whole thing. The closing ceremony was an equal, but different kind of mess. At least in Beijing, China was able to throw so many people at their opening ceremony it cut through all cultural barriers. Who needs subtlety when there is like a million people on the stadium floor?
With all the crap NBC took for tape delaying the Olympics, it would have been great for the network to have essentially a “director’s cut” approach to their evening 2012 London Olympics programming. NBC could have featured (on either a main channel or an adjacent one) deeper analysis, competitor interviews, and even meaningful social media perspectives that assumed knowledge of the outcome. Like the explanatory commentary and alternative takes on a movie DVD, the approach could have taken viewers deeper inside the competition than is possible with a live broadcast.
Was it just me or did anyone else think that most of the announcers at the 2012 London Olympics sounded like Dick Enberg or Verne Lundquist?
The Marketing
My favorite advertising song from the broadcast (at least one that prompted me to download it) was from Samsung, which featured “Smile Big” by Leftover Cuties (affiliate link). “Too Close” by Alex Clare (which is featured in the Microsoft Internet Explorer ads) still remain a favorite, but it has been for some time.
My favorite national advertisement was “The Ex” for Toyota Camry (although until I started writing this blog post, I couldn’t have told you who the ad was for, other than I knew it was a car company). While the Toyota Camry ad may not sit well with the mental health community, “The Ex” stood out for its entertainment value since it reminded me of a Kristin Wiig character from Saturday Night Live.
In Kansas City, Google Fiber took great advantage of the Olympics for building even more awareness of its introduction locally. On the other hand, the last few days of the Olympics were a little more pleasant with slightly fewer Missouri primary ads; it’s tough to decide which Missouri political ad I’ll miss more: Sarah Palin, the guy who missed 500 House votes (but not one House Party), or Lieutenant Governor candidate Peter Kinder who was called out in his opponent’s ad as being an unruly strip club patron. – Mike Brown
Download the free ebook, “Taking the NO Out of InNOvation” to help you generate fantastic ideas! For an organizational creativity boost, contact The Brainzooming Group to help your team be more successful by rapidly expanding strategic options and creating innovative plans to efficiently implement. Email us atinfo@brainzooming.comor call us at 816-509-5320 to learn how we can deliver these benefits for you.
Founder of The Brainzooming Group, and a huge fan of strategy, creativity, and innovation. Mike is a frequent speaker on innovation, strategic thinking, and social media.
But what if your brand wanted to APPEAR to be an Olympic Games sponsor without paying the typical sponsorship fee? Is that even possible?
Yes, it is possible, if you are adept at guerrilla marketing (affiliate link) and are willing to try a sponsor bomb strategy. A sponsor bomb, similar to a photobomb, involves getting near enough to a major sponsorship property to be able to bask in the attention it generates – without running afoul of the sponsorship property owner!
How do you sponsor bomb the Summer Olympics?
Here is how we applied guerrilla marketing principles to create a sponsor bomb for the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics at my former company, a global business-to-business transportation services provider.
The Background for the Strategy
Our company wanted to send a message to a focused target audience of employees in our headquarter locations – Kansas City, MO and Cleveland / Akron, OH – and the broader local communities. The message was our company was still viable, had a global perspective, and had the stability to be associated with a major event such as the Summer Olympics.
The guerrilla marketing approach involved a series of 4 identically-structured television commercials starring our own employees from around the world. Each commercial delivered the same message and was featured in heavy rotation during local advertising breaks for the NBC affiliates within the Summer Olympics in our headquarter TV markets. While we skimped on metrics (because of a very tight budget), the overwhelming feedback of people in both markets was a belief that we had to be a major sponsor of the Summer Olympics.
4 Keys to Sponsor Bomb a Major Sponsorship Property with Guerrilla Marketing
From our experience sponsor bombing the Olympics, here are our takeaway guerrilla marketing lessons to developing and implementing a sponsor bomb strategy:
1. Figure Out All the Places Where the Event Will Be Visible to Your Target Audience
If you’re going to sponsor bomb successfully, identify everywhere the sponsor property will be visible – in-person, traditional media, online, etc. Once you have done that, figure out which venue is most likely to overlap with where your target audience will be viewing or participating in the event.
In our case: The opportunity was to buy time in the local TV affiliate breaks since it was affordable and allowed us to target audiences in Kansas City and Cleveland/Akron.
2. Mass Inferior Resources to Maximize the Impact
When you are using a guerrilla marketing strategy in place of a traditional sponsorship it probably means you have inferior resources relative to traditional sponsors. The difference is though, you may have proportionately more dollars to put into marketing the sponsor bomb effort. You need to orient the marketing mix for your sponsor bomb strategy to have the biggest possible impact when you can be active, even if it means passing up having a presence elsewhere / at other times.
In our case: We put our advertising investment into only the two (eventually 3) local markets with 15-second TV commercials. These shorter commercials were less costly, allowing us to buy approximately 100 or more airings in each market coming into and leaving local break in the Olympics. The result was if you were in either local market, we seemed to “own” the Olympics broadcast because of the high frequency we achieved.
3. Keep Your Hands Really Clean
With a sponsor bomb strategy, you don’t want to run afoul of the sponsorship property owner or other sponsors. That means it is vital to understand what you can and cannot do, say, and represent relative to the property.
In our case: We could not show the Olympic rings, but the legal team said we could say “Summer Olympics” without naming the host city of the Olympics.
4. The creative execution should be more strategic than creative (and it must be incredibly creative)
Creative execution for a sponsor bomb has to integrate strongly with the rest of the sponsor bomb strategy to maximize the impact with the target audience. The creative has to match up with the objectives, the budget, and how you are deploying resources. To make the sponsor bomb work, creative that generates a big “wow” without supporting every aspect of the strategy is just a wasted opportunity.
The Brainzooming Group helps make smart organizations more successful by rapidly expanding their strategic options and creating innovative plans they can efficiently implement. Email us at info@brainzooming.com or call us at 816-509-5320 to learn how we can help you enhance your strategy and implementation efforts.
Founder of The Brainzooming Group, and a huge fan of strategy, creativity, and innovation. Mike is a frequent speaker on innovation, strategic thinking, and social media.
What’s Next? The Gigabit City Summit: A Global Dialog on Smart and Connected Cities
Most recently The Brainzooming Group has partnered with Curiolab and Sandel & Associates to create and produce the Gigabit City Summit, A Global Dialog on Smart and Connected Cities. This series of global discussions held through Cisco Telepresence, is allowing experts worldwide to meet, share their expertise, and convey best practices from the implementation of next-generation city efforts. Participants throughout the Gigabit City Summit sessions will include:
City leaders at the forefront of next-generation communities
Industry and community experts who manage smart/intelligent community initiatives
Vertical experts in industries highly subject to disruption by a faster, more seamless Internet, including media, healthcare, education, government, entrepreneurship, and venture capital
As a Brainzooming reader, I want to personally invite you to listen and participate live via WebEx, courtesy of the Smart + Connected Communities Institute, to the next session on Leadership, Organization and Community Challenges. The session will take place live on Wednesday, July 25th, 7:00-9:00 am CDT and will be available for replay afterward.
The second Gigabit City Summit will features representatives from innovation hubs around the world, including Amsterdam, Barcelona, Hyderabad, Singapore and Toronto. In addition the co-chairs of the Mayors’ Bistate Innovations Team, Mike Burke and Ray Daniels, along with David Warm, Executive Director of Kansas City’s regional planning organization will talk about preparation for the arrival of Google Fiber, which is scheduled to make a major announcement about the Kansas City Google Fiber product launch on July 26th.
Sponsor the Gigabit City Summit
Beyond listening to the sessions, there are sponsorship opportunities for organizations who would like to engage in these global, next-generation cities conversations.
How can ultra high-speed internet speeds drive innovation? “Building the Gigabit City: Brainzooming a Google Fiber Roadmap,” a free 120-page report, shares 60 business opportunities for driving innovation and hundreds of ideas for education, healthcare, jobs, community activities, and more. Download this exclusive Google Fiber report sponsored by Social Media Club of Kansas City and The Brainzooming Group addressing how ultra high-speed internet can spur economic development, growth, and improved lifestyles globally.
Founder of The Brainzooming Group, and a huge fan of strategy, creativity, and innovation. Mike is a frequent speaker on innovation, strategic thinking, and social media.
I’ve had multiple social media-oriented conversations with potential clients recently about how social media in general, and Facebook specifically, supports business-to-business (B2B) relationship marketing. In the midst of these conversations, a real-life B2B relationship marketing case study played out recently courtesy of a Facebook friend who is in B2B sales. Her business-to-business Facebook example demonstrated the strategic perspective we advocate with clients: you can create dynamic experiential marketing opportunities by integrating guerrilla marketing, event marketing, and social media in a B2B setting.
One note: I asked my friend who was behind this experiential marketing case study about using photos and actual Facebook screen shots to better illustrate the content marketing side of her strategy. Because of privacy concerns, however, I can’t. As a result, this overview is generalized – to protect those who had the fun.
Photo by: fkey | Source: Photocase.com
The Experience Creator
My friend is a senior business development leader for a marketing services company. She’s an incredible networker who will tell you everybody she does business with is a friend. Looking through her nearly thousand Facebook friends, you see a mix of marketers on both the client and provider side. Ultimately, she’s looking to her network and relationship marketing to grow her company’s revenues through helping more clients in more ways. That’s a pretty classic business-to-business objective.
Strengthening B2B Relationships Through Experiential Marketing
My friend created a couples-oriented, weekend experience for several decision makers and influencers at a current client. The weekend involved a few meals – one at a steakhouse Esquire magazine recognized as a top US restaurant and another at a restaurant with a striking view of a natural landmark.
The big event for the weekend was attending one of the “dinosaurs of rock” concerts rumbling across the countryside this summer. Not coincidentally, my friend’s husband knows a musician in one of the well-known bands. This afforded her client group seats close to the stage plus the opportunity to go backstage and meet and greet with performers from several bands.
High Personal Interest: The invitees were of an age where these bands would have been all over the radio during those formative teenage years
Strong Emotional Intensity: Being able to experience the concert up-close, go backstage, and meet the stars (made possible by using an important guerrilla marketing tactic: using all the relationships you have to improve your marketing assets)
A Clear Enabling Brand: My friend who created the experience was there the whole time
Combining personal interest, emotional intensity, with clarity about how a brand fits into that and made the experience happen is a proven formula for creating a memorable business-to-business experience.
Using Social Media and Content Marketing to Enhance Experiential Marketing
If my friend had done nothing more than creating this memorable event experience, she’d have further solidified relationships and likely identified new business opportunities with three key clients. And that’s a lot. But she also turned the experience into a content marketing bonanza (again, just as we advocate). At each venue, she checked in on Facebook, plus had photos taken of:
Her and her clients
Her and her clients and their spouses
The performers onstage from their upfront seats
The entire group with the performers backstage
Importantly, she made the effort to tag herself, her clients, and even the performers they met in more than thirty photos she shared (with “public” status) on Facebook. Of course, her clients were able to like and re-share these photos with their Facebook friends too.
By turning the experiential marketing event into a content marketing opportunity, the weekend experience supported her relationship marketing objectives five ways,
An opportunity for her clients to look like rock stars to their Facebook friends (many of whom are likely “professional” Facebook friends who also buy the types of marketing services my friend sells)
A signal to my friend’s other current and prospective Facebook friend clients that great clients get an opportunity to have memorable experiences
In talking with my friend a week afterward, she told me she importantly secured an okay from each client invitee to share content on Facebook – a smart content marketing move since people can have very different privacy and comfort levels with social media sharing.
Combining Experiential Marketing and Content Marketing as Part of B2b Relationship Marketing
If you’re still on the fence about how social media supports the business-to-business sales / business development process, this example should ideally start to push you off the fence. It’s not an example that will work for every business-to-business situation, but it does demonstrate how you can use fundamental event marketing and social media principles to design customer experiences which grow, solidify, and drive results from business-to-business relationships. – Mike Brown
The Brainzooming Group helps make smart organizations more successful by rapidly expanding their strategic options and creating innovative plans they can efficiently implement. Email us at info@brainzooming.com or call us at 816-509-5320 to learn how we can help you enhance your customer service in a smart way without seeming as if you’re micro-managing the customer experience.
Founder of The Brainzooming Group, and a huge fan of strategy, creativity, and innovation. Mike is a frequent speaker on innovation, strategic thinking, and social media.
I saw one visitor on the local news remark about how Kansas City, in contrast to larger cities hosting the All-Star Game, really provided a sense that the All-Star Game is the only show in town. That reaction is similar to ones often heard whenever Kansas City is fortunate enough to host a major event.
The strong positive sentiment for Kansas City may be surprising to the rest of the world, because Kansas City is easy to overlook.
I’ve always been one to love an underdog, whether it is a city, sports team, brand, or even an employee I’ve hired. I love the person who is going to come in and surprise everyone by doing incredible things no one would have ever expected.
9 Reasons to Love an Underdog
Why do I love an underdog so much? Well, here are nine reasons to love an underdog since it:
9. Is going to be fiercely loyal to whoever believes in them.
What are your reasons to love an underdog?
Am I alone on this, or do you have a soft spot for underdogs as well? Are there other reasons to love an underdog you would add? Are there certain types of underdogs you like, or do you like all underdogs? I’d love to hear about your favorites! – Mike Brown
Download the free ebook, “Taking the NO Out of InNOvation” to help you generate fantastic ideas! For an organizational creativity boost, contact The Brainzooming Group to help your team be more successful by rapidly expanding strategic options and creating innovative plans to efficiently implement. Email us atinfo@brainzooming.comor call us at 816-509-5320 to learn how we can deliver these benefits for you.
Founder of The Brainzooming Group, and a huge fan of strategy, creativity, and innovation. Mike is a frequent speaker on innovation, strategic thinking, and social media.
I spent two days last week with a business conference focus, attending two Kansas City events: The iKC Innovation Conference on Wednesday and the Kansas City Digital Storytelling Forum on Thursday. The keynote presenters at both business conferences were worth the price of admission (Michael Raynor (affiliate link) at iKC and Frank Rose (affiliate link) at the Digital Storytelling Forum), which was great because the panel discussions at each business conference were less successful. While that is disappointing, it is not shocking. Weak panel discussion sessions are more frequent at a business conference than free logoed pens.
7 Ideas for Event Planners to Make Panel Discussions Better
What can an event planner do to make a business conference panel discussion a stronger part of the audience experience? Here are seven ideas an event planner and a panel moderator should consider when deciding to include a panel discussion in a business conference:
1. A bad solo presenter isn’t necessarily going to be a compelling panel discussion member
There seems to be a rampant belief among event planners that a bad solo presenter will suddenly be great when placed in a panel discussion. That is simply not true. If someone has a good personality, enthusiasm for a topic, and is engaging BUT simply does not present well individually, a panel discussion slot can be the answer. If the person has a bland personality, little energy, and is not engaging when they interact, however, an event planner needs to forget about a panel discussion slot fixing the problem.
2. An event sponsor’s employees won’t necessarily be compelling panel discussion members either
It is easy for an event planner to offer discussion panel slots to sponsors’ employees as part of a sponsorship package. But if an event planner is serious about great content, then the sponsor’s employees need to be strong panelists to earn an onstage role. Boring panelists from a major sponsor fill up space, but will not reflect well on the sponsor or the event planner.
3. A panel moderator should watch Charlie Rose, Larry King, and The McLaughlin Group beforehand
The panel moderator has the job of starting the conversation, creating a compelling flow, making connections, and tying topics together. These hosts all handle(d) group interactions in different ways, but each is worth watching and learning from for any new panel moderator.
4. The panel moderator should talk with panelists individually
While pre-session group calls with panels are fine for getting to know each other, the panel moderator should talk to each panelist individually as well. One-on-one interviews are used to identify individual topics specific to each person so there’s fresh content for panelists to react to when the panel is live onstage.
5. Discuss topics, not questions, with panel members ahead of time
It’s great to have panelists well-versed on the subject matter. But it doesn’t make for an interesting panel discussion when panelists have all the questions upfront to rehearse answers. When that happens, you have both a bad presentation (because the remarks are all prepared) and a bad panel (because interaction evaporates).
6. Identify areas of healthy disagreement to explore during the panel discussion
When everyone on a panel agrees, it’s boring. Without different perspectives, there’s no basis for healthy (and interesting) interaction. It’s up to the organizer to assemble a panel that represents differing perspectives and experience. It’s up to the moderator to identify areas where panel members can exchange differing perspectives and then challenge them to do so.
7. Not everyone has to answer every question
The point of a panel isn’t to take a 45-minute chunk of conference time and divide it evenly with each panelist getting equal time. Yet, so many panel sessions try to have equal participation to the detriment of the overall session. Let panelists address questions that make the most sense for them (even if it’s not all equal) and interact with each other. It may seem less orderly to the event planner, but it will definitely provide a more compelling audience experience.
Do you enjoy panel discussions at business conferences?
Granted, I’ve taken a pretty harsh view of panel discussions here, but there are some redeeming qualities and compelling content that can emerge. What do you enjoy or not enjoy about business conference panel discussions? – Mike Brown
Founder of The Brainzooming Group, and a huge fan of strategy, creativity, and innovation. Mike is a frequent speaker on innovation, strategic thinking, and social media.
I’m in Springfield, MO today keynoting the Southwest Missouri PRSA Professional Development Conference. The theme for the PRSA conference is “Driving Forces,” and the morning presentation will frame up 6 driving forces PR professionals are facing:
The Thrill of Victory? 
Nobody can deny that this had to be a memorable experience for the three business-to-business clients who participated since the experience took full advantage of 
